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Cheyann Peeteetuce and Blaine Taypotat killed three people while driving drunk.

Innocent people were taken, and families were left shattered, suffering and angry.

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission finished its examination of Indian residential schools two weeks ago, there was optimism. Many Canadians asked, “Where do we go from here?”

One place to start is by realizing that the wrongs adults were allowed to commit at residential schools are still hurting aboriginal people, and the pain is rippling out into the wider community. Another is to see that far more needs to be done to address addictions and the underlying pain that fuels them.

Peeteetuce’s and Taypotat’s life histories, summarized at their sentencing hearings Friday in Saskatoon, reveal the traumas that influenced their paths.

If we could to go back to change the circumstances that led to those fatal crashes, we would have to go further than the moments they got behind the wheel while drunk.

When Taypotat apologized for the death of Justin Knackstedt, someone responded, “Sorry won’t bring him back.”

Yet, how many people, seeing two more native people going to prison for addictions-related crimes, are thinking the same thing about Canada’s apology and the children who died at residential schools or returned from them psychologically damaged?

These tragedies are the result of Canada’s racist policies. It’s too easy to blame the individuals, as if their actions had no connection to the effects of those policies.

Look at Peeteetuce’s childhood. Imagine having a mother addicted to alcohol; imagine witnessing your stepfather beating your mother; imagine the trauma upon a two-year-old when her stepfather tried to drown her. What effect does that have on the inner life of a child?

What nurturing was there for that little girl to quell the fear she must have lived in and to make her feel safe, to assure her that she was worthy of love? What resources did her mother have to assure her nothing as bad as that would ever happen again, and to provide a better day-to-day experience?

We only know that Peeteetuce was pregnant when she quit school in Grade 9 and gave birth when she was 16. Her baby died just 10 months later while in the care of his father.

Can you imagine the grief? What comfort could she draw upon to ground her in the excruciating darkness of that first year after the tragedy and the years after that?

Is it any surprise she followed the example set by the adults in her life and escaped reality through any substance she could get? Once addiction took hold, is anyone surprised that she would do whatever it took to get the drugs? Is it any surprise that the place she felt accepted and equal was in a street gang, among other aboriginal teens with comparable life experiences?

Taypotat began his life without biological parents, in an adoptive home. He was orphaned at age nine and sent to a residential school where he was sexually and physically abused.

Can you imagine losing both parents, not once, but twice, by the time you are nine? Can you imagine that lonely, lost boy crying at night in his bed? Who was there to hold him and say gentle words while he grieved?

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Nobody. Instead, people paid to take care of that boy in a federally funded residential school inflicted violence on his little body. How was he to come to terms with those experiences as he grew into adolescence and manhood?

Is anyone surprised his life path led repeatedly to jail? Is anyone surprised that when he received the Common Experience Payment after residential school survivors successfully sued the federal government, he spent it on alcohol and drugs to stop thinking for a few hours at a time about his pain and anger at the world?

Maybe the surprise is that so many aboriginal people have overcome similar horrors and now live healthy lives.

The tragedy of the deaths of Cheyann’s baby and Taypotat’s parents are as real as the tragedy of the deaths of Sarah Wensley, James Haughey and Justin Knackstedt.

We need to connect the dots between the racist attitudes behind the residential school experience and its consequences. Generations of Canadians have been glad to benefit from the land resources of their treaty partners, while begrudging the inadequate dollars to address mental health, addictions and underfunded aboriginal schools.

If there is to be reconciliation, mainstream Canada must own its responsibility and implement policies that really make a difference. It is painfully clear that what hurts aboriginal people hurts the rest of Canada, too.

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